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This includes Crafty 23.5, but does not include its opening book, get it from Dr. Dr. Hyatt's ftp site or here.The binary "book.bin" must be placed in the root directory of the binaries.(files "bookc.bin" and "books.bin" are optional) .....

· added new tournament mode, for engines and users as well, with four tournament modes, modified Buchholz tie breaking algorithm and ability to suspend tournament for later resuming (when not in machine vs human mode) + ability to replay active game without suspending it when in Machine VS Machine mode

· further improved PGN support capabilities (the interface will now try to parse non standard PGN notation moves) + the program will even try to guess a consistent move in case one or even several moves are unreadable

· added 50-move rule and insufficient material draw detection in scenarious where it would not work before

· added ability to continuously analyze a changing position in Human Vs Human mode or while browsing the move list in analyze mode

· added new evaluation tracking textboxes to the "Crafty Window"

· added support for browsing PGN library that was loaded from clipboard

· now scroll-bars will appear for the main window (MDI) if some enabled child window will be completely (or next to completely) out of view (these scrollbars respond both to mouse wheel and keyboard arrow key input)

· slow piece movement animation won't block input

· once more tested as usable on Linux Gentoo with Wine (I will make tests on other distros when I will find time for it)

· fixed the strange bug that if you clicked for the first time in one program session on a piece - the piece would become hidden until you moved your mouse

· fixed bug which occured when switching a variation involving a result move (1/2-1/2, 1-0, 0-1), the previous variation would be stored in moveNum-1 move thus corrupting the variation list

· fixed bug where starting timestamp (move 0) would not be added in several scenarious

· fixed bug in mate search function which could cause crashes or unpredictable behaviour when searching in positions with over 100 legal moves

· fixed some bugs concerning switching to position setup or new game while in 'Crafty VS Crafty' mode

· fixed bug which made user unable to change some Crafty personality options (check extension, null-move reduction, min/max LMR reduction) - this was due to skill option always overriding them - now they will be overriden only when skill<100

· fixed a very awkward bug where you could 'win' game by resigning while it is not your move

· fixed bug in the MakeMove function (castling flag of a position would not change if you captured a castling rook by pawn promotion - normaly this would not hurt, as the move generator checks for rook's presence anyway, but problems could still occur in some other scenarious)

· fixed bug with time control [Set] button - it should be in bold font when time control has been changed, but has not yet been set and vice-versa (later I made this button invisible while it is not necessary)

· only way to fix extremelly hard bug (rich text box text jumping out of its frame) was to always disable repainting (WM_SETREDRAW) while new engine output is coming in the "Terminal Window" (ex output window) - the bug is tied to Aero glass (with Aero glass - a.k.a. Desktop composition - off it never occurs - and this is not only Windows 7 Aero) and appears to be related to resizing/moving the rich text box prior to bug - it happens on all richtx32.ocx versions and it has next to nothing to do with text being outputed or any other Crafty GUI property

Please note - this is considered an alpha release. This is because that, while the most functionality of the interface is very well tested and can be considered stable, there are quite a few functions that still require rigorous and long use to be considered stable, that's why I call it an alpha release. I will considered it beta when there will be very few little tested functions, and a stable release when the version would have undergone at least few months of rigorous testing with little modifications and next to none alpha level procedures.I release an alpha because I have already greatly overdid my time involvement expectations, and also because I currently will be unable to seriously continue the work for some time.

- Changed Crafty engine from v23.6 to v23.8- Crafty Chess now has an accurate implementation of FIDE approved tournament system (Swiss Dubov pairing system)- Swiss engine tournament results will now be saved as HTML document which will display full game/result table with ability to view every game by clicking on it- greatly reduced possible issues with UCI engines (mainly caused by old cygwin version compatibility issues with polyglot)- engine option dialog now has engine command line parameter support- added portable 7-zip archive version of Crafty Chess Interface for download - the main difference is that it does not store any settings in Windows registry (instead as files in local subdirectory), and stores engines that are put in Crafty interface directory (or subdirectories of it) as relative path, so you can easily redeploy this version on another machine together with preinstalled engines- paste PGN can now support large text pasting (when for example you wish to paste large PGN database)- Crafty Chess Interface now has full support for any Custom (WindowsXP style) DPI setting (including automatic resizing of move list window buttons etc.)- removed any MSVC 9.0 dependencies as they were just taking up space and causing debugging inconveniences- fixed inability to force UCI engine system priority- fixed problems with "best line" display for in-built Crafty mode- fixed bug in opening name detection which could cause buffer overflow error (with unpredictable result)- fixed issues with frequent UCI engine restarting upon initialization when under high system load on certain systems- fixed issues with coordinate letters on some high DPI settings- fixed several other smaller issues

- Changed Crafty engine from v23.8 to v24.1- Changed menus to Office XP style (open source version this time)- Added “Time Control” (clock) column in PGN library view (thus enabling to order by TC as well)- [Analyze mode] will automatically enter "Human Vs Human" mode so that you can make moves and watch the evaluation- Crafty output will be less ‘noisy’ by default, to make it easier to see the most important information (best line and score) Engine ini files and PGNs will now by saved in My Documents folder “CraftyChess”- Some slight graphical improvements to the 3D board mode- Inno setup installation in three languages, uninstallation option (via Control Panel), option for associating PGN with the GUI etc.- after returning from Windows sleep mode while Crafty window was minimized (or in some other rare scenarios) all Crafty child windows might dissapear - this has been fixed to an extent of making it a non-issue (the origins of the bug are still not fully clear)- "Crafty Chess tournament" incorrectly recorded user result when playing as black (made this error in one of last few versions, it did not concern "Engine tournament mode")- incorrect move markers when using premove in the rotated 2D board mode (i.e. - when playing as black)- PGN library did not erase column value from previous item while loading (thus when PGN library with differing PGN header availability was loaded some games might have been shown as having the same date/event/site as the one for which this information was unavailable, however such PGN libraries are not common)- fixed some issues with small window mode- fixed bugs concerning activation of 3D board for first time with high DPI or rotated 2D board mode